Who is for AV on its own merits?

HJ

"AV is a funny electoral system. It is neither first past the post nor proportional."

Actually, the Alternative Vote system IS 'first past the post'- the post in question being a fixed requirement that a candidate must get past 50% support in order to win.

It is a complete misnomer to describe the current system as 'first past the post' - the word 'post' implies a fixed target ('post') in order to win. In fact, you can win no matter how small your share of the vote, provided it is larger than that of any other individual candidate.

Alexander

I grew up in Australia and it is by far the best system.

UK should do what Australia does:

(a) Have AV for the House of Commons and
(b) Proportional representation for the Upper House (Senate or whatever the UK decides to call it).

You do not need "old men" with loads of experience in the Upper House BUT you do need proper scrutiny...could be done through hearing and proper use of committees and outside experts.

Problem with Labour's years in power was too much sloppy and unworkable legislation/regulations.

denis cooper

I suppose the counter could be to ask the "no" side whether they believe that FPTP is the best possible electoral system.

I don't, far from it; I'd much prefer to achieve "bi-cameral proportional representation" by supplementing FPTP for the Commons with SPTP for a new Second Chamber.

With no change to the relative powers of the two chambers from those already laid down in the Parliament Acts.

Paul Perrin

I am not aware of anyone who believes FPTP is perfect either - are you?

AV is the best available non-PR system - it carries all the benefits claimed for FPTP, and improves on some of FPTP's flaws.

Daragh McDowell

As its a choice between AV and FPTP, I'm for AV as it is a significant improvement on the status quo. Simple no?

Simon Foster

I'm for AV and fairer votes on its own merits. Why?

1) On average, it's more proportional than FPTP.

2) On average, it produces less safe seats than FPTP.

3) It's more democratic as it allows people to express more than 1 preferences.

4) It still maintains a strong constituency link, with 1 person speaking on behalf of a local area.

If anyone wants to sign up to the Yes to Fairer Votes Campaign you can do so here: http://www.yestofairervotes.org/

Simon Foster
Politics Lecturer (based in the West Midlands).

HairyNoddy

Our only chance of a truly representative government is through PR, where each vote counts and tactical voting serves no purpose.

JohnPage

James, your post is of course twisting the issue, and not at all subtly.

Of the two systems which may be on offer, I prefer AV because it gives me a better chance to vote effectively according to my opinions.

In short, it is more democratic.

I don't have to say whether I favour PR (actually I abominate party lists). I do favour democracy, even though it's opposed by the smug political vested interests.

By the way, Mr Djanogly is an excellent argument for primaries.

JohnAnt

I can see some merit in the AV system, but I'd be wary of implementing it just to help favour the LibDems. Many of them do not want to be in any government, they'd much rather be a perpetual party of opposition. Could this not be achieved with less public expense?
OTOH we do need fairer constituency boundaries, but historically a referendum has not yet been needed to implement these.

Andy Leeds

First of all AV is a system which no one wants nor anyone advocated in their manifestos (lets ignore Labour). But what is lacking from this whole debate is a proper consideration of what we really should be doing.

Where is discussion of an English Parliament ? Why can Scotland have one and not England ? Why are the English so unique despised as to be denied the rights others so freely claim ? And if the English are not to have a parliament why should Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish MPs retain voting rights over English affairs where there is no such right for English members to have a say over these same matters when devolved ? It is a nonsense. So when you begin to ask these questions one has to ask why we need so large a House of Commons ? Surely it could be halved in size if we had devolution. So that would change the ball game.

Should we have a Commons elected by FPTP or a different system ? And what about the House of Lords ? How should this be elected, or should it be elected at all ?

Personally I would favour devolution for England and then a radically reformed House of Commons elected by FPTP. I would then have a House of Lords elected on a different cycle to the Commons and elected on the purest form of PR available. There would be a few appointed members, great officers of State and all former Prime Ministers, but that would be it.

TrevorsDen

It ought I suppose, as the LDs do say, make more constituencies marginal, at least in theory.
But the very prospect of an AV may colour how people vote in the first place - certainly if there was a run off between the top two (as in France) it might influence choices.
But it is complex - a voter has to decide who they are most in favour of and then have to second guess a likely result and then decide who they are least in favour of and who is best able to stand in that persons way - if they bother to turn out at all.

The disaster that is PR was exposed in the current Australian election.

denis cooper

TrevorsDen -

"The disaster that is PR was exposed in the current Australian election."

That election wasn't held under PR, and in what way did it expose anything as a disaster?

denis cooper

Let me pose another question.

Who is for a total restructuring of the parliamentary constituencies, disregarding all sense of local community and at unspecified cost to the taxpayer, just so that the Tories might win up to 6 seats more at the expense of Labour?

Marcher Baron

So what you're saying is, we'll be voting ostensibly on AV, but if we accept that we'll ultimately get something else? Shades of the EEC referendum in the 70s and look how well that turned out.

Paul McKeown

The arguments of the anti brigade are getting more comical by the minute.

Q. "The first past the post side will demand to know if their opponent thinks AV is the best possible electoral system"

N. "No, but it is much more better than the current system; nothing else was on offer from those that profit most by disproportional misrepresentation."

denis cooper

OK, "First Past The Post", so called by analogy with horse races.

Except that the analogy is deeply flawed, because horse races aren't usually conducted on the same "winner takes all" basis as parliamentary elections.

For example, for the Cheltenham Gold Cup in 2010 there was total prize money of £475,000, divided as follows:

http://www.racingpost.com/horses/result_home.sd?race_id=496768&r_date=2010-03-19

First: £270,797.50
Second: £101,602.50
Third: £50,872.50
Fourth: £25,365.00
Fifth: £12,730.00
Sixth: £6,365.00

And here's the outcome for the parliamentary race in Cheltenham seven weeks later:

First: A seat in the House of Commons
All other runners: Nothing

And here's the distribution of legislative power which would reflect the proportions of the votes received by the various candidates in Cheltenham:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/election2010/results/constituency/b02.stm

First: 50.5%
Second: 41.2%
Third: 5.1%
Fourth: 2.3%
Fifth: 0.9%

If that doesn't make you feel that the present electoral system needs improving, nothing will.

Rhoda Klapp

Denis, wouldn't AV deliver the same result in Cheltenham? That's my problem with it, most of the time it wouldn't make much difference. I have no problem with reform, but this is not a true reform at all, it's just a fix by the establishment to make us think we've done something towards reform when in fact it gives the status quo whichever way the vote goes. No proportionality, no fix for the question of English democracy or (unless they are very brave) Scots and Welsh over-representation. This is not the way to approach a problem, and as the original post points out it is largely driven not by what is best for the nation but by a shoddy deal for short-term political gain.

It stinks.

TGF UKIP

Proportional representation is the direct route to gangster politics whereby a minor party can blackmail the major party into ceding unwise but populist policies against the national interest but to the direct advantage of the minor party.

Nowhere was this better exemplified than by the previous administration in Scotland where the LibDems, who were not even the third but the fourth party, forced Labour into doing things that were daft and expensive even by their standards.

AV, let alone PR, will still make this outcome far more likely than FPTP and go a long way to ensuring that we will have yet more absurdities like the present one with the LibDem 57 seat tail wagging the Tory 307 seat dog.

Unfortunately, as we know the present Tory leader is only too happy with this situation and quite willing to conspire with his new best friends to ensure that the UK will never again have a government of the Right.

David Ossitt

“Rather, they all view it as a stepping stone to proper PR.”

So does everybody else, which is why it must be stopped.

It really stinks of jiggery-pokery.

Paul McKeown

@TGF UKIP

Chum, how do you propose to achieve representation for your kipper party, without a more proportional form of parliamentary representation? As it was your shoal of smoked fish netted close to a million ballots, without managing to land a single MP... AV is certainly not proportional, but nevertheless it gives you and your lot a better chance as:
a) you need only come second in each seat and then can play the transfer market, in order to win the seat. The returns will be meagre, but they must certainly be better than under FPTP
b) you won't be splitting the anti-Labour vote, so you can almost certainly attract many more first preferences from anti-EU Tory voters
c) you will be giving the Lib Dems a score or a dozen more seats and they will use their improved parliamentary representation to push harder for genuinely proportional representation.

Your post makes me think that you are either:
a) not a genuine supporter of one of the smaller parties at all, thus simply a troll
or b) not really thought about what you are talking about at all, before laying in with gusto into your daft self-defeating post

denis cooper

Rhoda Klapp -

Yes, in the case of Cheltenham it seems very unlikely that the outcome would have been different under AV.

That can't be said with complete certainty because although the leading candidate, the LibDem, got more than 50% of the votes under FPTP he might not have got more than 50% of the first preference votes under AV - if he had, that would have settled it - and it's just about conceivable that the Tory might have ended up winning when second preference votes were transferred from the Labour candidate in third place.

Just about conceivable, but very unlikely; more probably the LibDem would have still won, but by a slightly larger margin.

However elsewhere there would have been some cases where the outcome under AV would have been different from the outcome under FPTP, and probably there would have been a small move in the direction of greater proportionality.

The most obvious manifestation of that, and the one which leads many Tories to immediately oppose AV, would have been the election of maybe 22 more LibDem MPs:

http://www.epolitix.com/latestnews/article-detail/newsarticle/bill-briefing-parliamentary-voting-system-and-constituencies-bill

But that would only have taken their total from 57 to 79, still a long way short of the 150 they would have got on strict proportionality.

Total votes cast for each party's candidates, divided by the number of Commons seats won by that party:

Tory 10,726,614 divided by 307 = 34,940
Labour 8,609,527 divided by 258 = 33,370
LibDem 6,836,824 divided by 57 = 119,944

To correct the disparity between Labour and Tory, transfer 6 seats from one to the other:

Tory 10,726,614 divided by 313 = 34,270
Labour 8,609,527 divided by 252 = 34,165

And that is what the Tories want, and all that the Tories want, and are determined to get by a complete restructuring of the parliamentary constituencies.

They're very happy about the LibDems being short not of merely 6 seats, but about 90 seats, and want to keep it that way.

Actually, almost everything about our current political system stinks; just one part of that stink comes from the present voting system; while the alternative voting system which will be offered also stinks, but slightly less.

However that is the only alternative which is being offered, and that only through a fortuitous combination of circumstances, and it will certainly do newer and smaller parties no harm and has the potential to do them some good; and a vote against AV will certainly be deliberately misinterpreted as a vote in favour of the status quo.

denis cooper

TGF UKIP -

You can't seriously believe that Cameron is in favour of AV and hopes "to ensure that the UK will never again have a government of the Right", ie a Tory government.

The Tories are against AV because it could significantly increase competition in the political market place, eventually undermining the Tories' own position - and that would be competition from the LibDems, straightaway, obviously, but also potentially from newer and smaller parties like UKIP.

britologywatch

The previous commenter was right to make the link between the AV referendum and the lack of consultation on an English parliament. The denial of PR and the denial of an English parliament are of one piece: an English parliament would use a PR system, as do the devolved bodies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Similarly, if PR was adopted for the present UK parliament, this would create a dynamic towards English votes on English matters (and ultimately, towards an English parliament), as it would be even more unacceptable for non-English MPs to vote on English bills if the numbers of English MPs more adequately reflected the shares of the vote in England. Why have PR if you're going to subvert it by allowing non-English-elected MPs to vote outside of their rightful jurisdiction, tipping the balance against the expressed will of the English people?

All of which makes it especially ironic that the coalition government wants to hold the referendum on AV for the UK parliament that governs England on the same day as elections based on PR for the devolved governments that were brought in as a result of referendums in those countries. One rule (British rule) for England, and one rule (devolved rule) for the other countries of the UK!

Curious Calloway

AV is qualitatively better than FPTP for three main reasons: you can't win if you would lose a head to head contest against every other candidate, you are not punished simply because you have similar views to another candidate, and because the winner will always come from that set of candidates which the majority prefer.

This is not to say even better systems could not be devised - mathematicians, economists and political scientists have had fun with this question, and provided you don't mind letting a computer count the votes, and don't mind an impenetrable system that the average voter couldn't understand you can satisfy even more of the criteria political scientists use to assess voting systems. However - quite rightly - people demand that the democratic process be transparent and easy to understand.

Finally, there are multiple member election systems. PR can be counted in a wide variety of ways - the most simple method is to divide the number of voters by the number of seats and allocate a seat to every party who meets the quota. This isn't used very often in practice because it tends towered very proportional results - uncomfortable for the larger parties. Instead, the parties tend to favour methods of PR that underrepresent the small parties. And it also poses questions of constituency size and relative preferences - do you want STV or a list system?

Finally, it's not very clever to paint AV as a compromise between PR and FPTP. It isn't - it is merely an alternative method of selecting a representative in a single member constituency. It is not proportional, and a supporter of PR is deluding himself if he thinks otherwise. But as a system of selecting a single MP, AV is superior to FPTP according to many objective criteria of judging electoral systems.

It doesn't add up...

In the final analysis, Lib Dems probably don't care if they lose AV - which might change politics in ways that squeeze them rather than benefit them. What they do care about is being able to have the replacement for the Lords elected on a true PR system, creating a blocking minority,without any scrutiny by referendum.

Either way, the public are being short changed and denied reforms that might improve politics such as more open systems of candidate selection at the expense of party machines seeking lobby fodder, and better pay for politicians to attract a better quality of candidate, or remedying our third world postal voting and registration system, or having an effective right of recall.

AV is likely simply to change the list of seats and parties that are safe without throwing up true marginals in any greater numbers. It could see a return to two party politics with fringe parties that don't matter, much as Australia's system has been under AV. It could see a rise in influence of minority parties such as Greens, BNP and UKIP, as major parties find more people make first preference protest votes and seek to appeal for second preference. It's possible that the Lib Dem influence may rise - but it's by no means certain.

Remember that all voting systems are unfair, can be manipulated and are subject to tactical voting (see relevant proofs by Arrow and Gibbard). Anyone professing preference for one system over another is simply saying they estimate it suits their preferred party better.

JohnAnt

@David Ossitt - "It really stinks of jiggery-pokery."
Or indeed, given the trough mentality of our MPs, of piggery-jokery.
Btw, the new boundaries won't prevent Scotland from having a disproportionate say. And I'm sorry to say the electorate has actually noticed this. Expect a No.

denis cooper

It doesn't add up -

The Australian variant of AV requires the voter to rank all the candidates on the ballot paper, whereas under the "optional preferential voting" variant of AV proposed for the UK the voter will be free to rank just one candidate, or two or more candidates, exactly as he pleases.

With the Australian variant, apart from forcing the voter to give a ranking to a candidate who he may find totally repugnant - be that the BNP candidate, or the Tory candidate, or any other candidate - it also means that all the valid ballot papers must end up in the piles of the two leading candidates, which I suspect tends to drive the system towards having just two significant parties in much the same way as FPTP.

Not only will the AV variant used in the UK give the voter more freedom, it will mean that at the end of the counting rounds there will be three piles of ballot papers not two, the third pile being those which have been discarded at some point for want of any further expressed preference, and this may reduce the tendency for the system to drift towards having just two parties.

Thus in this Irish by-election held last year under the variant of AV to be used in the UK:

http://electionsireland.org/counts.cfm?election=2007B&cons=85&ref

the winner ended up with a pile of 48% of the valid ballot papers, and the runner up ended up with a pile of 36% of the valid ballot papers; but 16% of the voters had made it clear that neither of those two leading candidates would be acceptable to them, and so their ballot papers ended up on the pile which had been discarded as no longer transferable.

Mr l

This is all terribly theoretical. I am still waiting for someone to tell me why (assuming AV were adopted) someone else's 3rd preference should have equal weight with my first (and maybe only) preference. Because that appears to be how it works. Or am I wrong? That 3rd preference may be unthought-out, whereas my only vote may be well-considered and reflecting a strong opinion. Under FPTP I may not get my way, but at least I can feel that each vote is only counting once, and is equally weighted.

denis cooper

JohnAnt -

"Btw, the new boundaries won't prevent Scotland from having a disproportionate say."

How disproportionate? At the moment Scotland should have 57 seats on the strict application of the electoral quota for England, and it actually has 59, the 2 extra being allowed because of the greater geographical difficulties.

http://www.bcomm-scotland.gov.uk/5th_westminster/report/chapter2.pdf

"Changes to the Rules

1. Section 86 of the Scotland Act 1998 made a number of changes to the Rules, the effect of which is as follows:

1.1 Rule 1(2) was removed: there is now no guaranteed minimum number of Scottish seats at Westminster.

1.2 Rule 3A was inserted: “A constituency which includes the Orkney Islands or the Shetland Islands shall not include the whole or any part of a local government area other than the Orkney Islands or the Shetland Islands”.

1.3 Rule 5 was altered: for the first review following the Scotland Act 1998, the electoral quota for England must be used to determine the appropriate number of Scottish seats at Westminster.

1.4 Rule 7 was modified: rule 3A, regarding the Orkney Islands and the Shetland Islands, cannot be disregarded."

"20. The implication of the treatment of Orkney Islands and Shetland Islands, of Na h-Eileanan an Iar and of Highland Council areas set out in paragraphs 17 and 19 above has led us to the designation of 59 constituencies instead of the 57 arrived at by strict application of the electoral quota."

I'm even more sick of people whining about Scotland having 2 extra constituencies on top of 57 out of 650 in the Commons, than I'm sick of Tories whining about getting 6 fewer seats than they think they deserved.

TGF UKIP

Denis Cooper, "The Tories are against AV", dead right they are, but not Cameron & Co who are all for it.

Consider the evidence: not only did Cameron lie to the Parliamentary Party regarding the purported Labour promise of AV, to get their agreement to offering that to Clegg & Co but the offer of AV to the LibDems was entirely unnecessary but nevertheless only too willingly conceded. Secondly, if you recall the initial indication from him was that he himself would not campaign, and indeed even now it would seem that any Cameron campaigning against AV would be about as enthusiastic as it was against Labour spending.

AS regards UKIP I would simply point out yet again that TGF UKIP stands for Thank God for UKIP as the only genuinely conservative repository available for my vote now that the Tory Party is in the hands of a self-declared green, egalitarian "progressive."

It doesn't add up...

@Denis Cooper:

There is no intrinsic reason why the Australian vote that is attributable to the complete ballot. You will recall that the Coalition still nominally consists of two parties, one of which dominates rural areas and the other, metropolitan ones. Moreover, we are now seeing signs of a challenge to the established order - but it is not coming from a centre party (like the Lib Dems), but instead from the left in the form of the Green challenge to Labor. It is precisely these features which lead me to consider that our psephologists haven't really considered the possible outcomes in the UK in adequate depth.

In the mean time we note that Gillard bought two independents for A$9.9bn, and a third more cheaply at A$340m in order to have a majority. Pork barrels all round - fine if your country can afford it, but I doubt we can.

It doesn't add up...

@Mr I:

You are right. AV assumes lower preferences are made with the same intensity of purpose as higher preferences. Also, the idea that the winner has 50% support is semi-fradulent. Consider a result of A/B/C 45/35/20. If C's second preferences are for B, then B wins with 55. However, if only 10 of B's second preferences are for A, then added to A's first round score, this also gives the same 55 winning vote. We have still ignored A's second preferences: if 35 of them are for C, then C could also win with 55. The result depends on whose second preferences are ignored, although in each case a winning total of 55 is achieved.

Wyrdtimes

English parliament please.

denis cooper

It doesn't add up @ 11:38 pm -

You may be right. It's only my gut instinct that the Australian version of AV may create an even greater pressure towards a system dominated by two parties (or electoral groupings) than FPTP, while the Irish version may create rather less of that pressure than FPTP.

In the Australian version - more exactly, that used for the federal elections - every citizen must vote, and ultimately every citizen must express support for one of the two leading candidates in a constituency. Because the voter must rank all candidates for his ballot paper to be valid, it doesn't matter which candidates' piles his paper may visit en route, it will always end up in a pile belonging to one of the two leading candidates.

In the Irish version - the version we will use here - not only is voting not compulsory, but those who do vote are free to rank just one candidate or more candidates, as they wish. So just as electors are free to reject the entire process by not voting at all, those who do vote are still free to express their rejection of the two leading candidates, and the level of that rejection will be recorded and published as the final size of the pile of ballot papers discarded through want of any further expressed preference.

In that Irish by-election turnout was 46% and the discard pile finally amounted to 16% of the ballot papers, meaning that 62% of the registered electors declined to support either of the two leading candidates. Under the Australian version that would have been 0%, assuming that all registered electors obeyed the law.

denis cooper

Mr I -

It's strange that this kind of objection wasn't raised during the election of the Tory leader in 2005, involving a process closely analogous to AV.

In the first round 38 Tory MPs expressed their first preference that Clarke should be the new Tory leader, but he came last and was eliminated from the next round.

Nobody complained when those 38 Tory MPs were then allowed to express their second preference in the next round of voting, or suggested that being second preference votes their votes should carry less weight.

Now we have Tory MPs vehemently arguing that I should not have the freedom to say "I would prefer A to be our MP, but failing him I would prefer B", when the process for electing the Tory leader gives each Tory MP the freedom to say "I would prefer A to be our leader, but failing him I would prefer B."

Rhoda Klapp

So I can envisage, under the aussie system, my paper could end up in the pile of a labour or BNP candidate even though I despise the very idea of either, and the winning candidate would be claiming democratic legitimacy based on my vote?

I don't like that much.

Why can't I have a vote for and a vote against? Apart from the obvious fun which that might entail with the least objectionable, or most obscure, candidate having a shot. Combine that with a PR count of the for votes in the second house?

I will say again the the choice AV or FPTP is a false dichotomy, designed to preserve the status quo no matter which is chosen, and does not constitute a reform, nor does the equal constituency thing which is no more than what the boundary commission is supposed to do anyway.

How about a referendum on who rules the nation? This is too important to be entrusted to the existing political class, who will only act to preserve their own position. Bastards.

denis cooper

TGF UKIP -

Cameron has said that he opposes AV but will not campaign, and likewise Clegg has said that he supports AV but will not campaign.

I hope they both stick to that, for the sake of their good relations and keeping the coalition together to tackle the budget deficit.

Instead of opposing AV to ensure that the Conservatives will be able to form another pro-EU government in the future, you should be thinking about how UKIP can achieve its primary aim of getting us out of the EU, and whether that aim is more likely to be achievable under FPTP or AV.

I can see no way in which AV could do any harm to UKIP, and like Paul McKeown I can see ways in which it could do UKIP some small but significant good.

I'll add to his list that under the Bill as it stands a candidate will recover his deposit if he gets more than 5% of the first preference votes - in Schedule 6 here:

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmbills/063/11063.146-152.html

Which could save UKIP a lot of money, given that an average 3% of the votes under FPTP could easily become an average of 10% of the first preference votes under AV.

denis cooper

No, Rhoda, you can't envisage that because we will have the Irish version NOT the Aussie version. That's perfectly clear in the Bill:

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmbills/063/11063.1-7.html

"(1) A voter votes by marking the ballot paper with -

(a) the number 1 opposite the name of the candidate who is the voter's first preference (or, as the case may be, the only candidate for whom the voter wishes to vote),

(b) if the voter wishes, the number 2 opposite the name of the candidate who is the voter's second preference,

and so on.

(2) The voter may mark as many preferences (up to the number of candidates) as the voter wishes."

Rhoda Klapp

Denis, I understood we will vote on the Irish version. Which makes as little sense to me as FPTP. As we agreed before, we expect little change in results. At the risk of repeating myself, this is a mere shuffling of deckchairs. Not a proper reform.

denis cooper

Yes, Rhoda, but as I've said before it's the small reform which will actually be on offer next May, purely through a fortuitous combination of circumstances, a situation which may not recur for many years, and it would do no harm at all to newer and smaller parties - euphemism for UKIP, if you care to read it that way - and it has the potential to do them a small but significant amount of good, and its rejection would be deliberately misrepresented as support for the status quo and would be cited as a reason for rejecting out of hand demands for any other more significant reforms that you may want.

I sometimes despair at the sheer perversity of those who turn their noses up at the free offer of half or a quarter or even an eighth of a loaf on the grounds that it isn't a full loaf, when it must still be better than no bread at all and it's all that they'll be offered at this point, and it's free.

See Wydrtimes above:

"English parliament please."

as if he's going to get an English parliament by asking nicely and saying "please" - rather than by working relentlessly to gradually change the composition and attitude of the House of Commons, which has an English parliament in its gift but will never give it until enough MPs have been replaced and/or have been sufficiently scared for their future careers that they'll vote for the law required to create an English parliament.

Rhoda Klapp

I don't think it is an eighth of a loaf, I think it is of no practical value at all. And as such, if whether it passes or fails puts real reform off the agenda for years. Which is why this bill is inadequate.

denis cooper

Well, Paul McKeown explained to TGF UKIP how moving from FPTP to AV could significantly help the latter's party, including the prospect that it could pave the way for other reforms, to which I'd add that saving several hundred deposits at £500 a throw must be of some practical value.

Barbara

There's not much difference in what we have now and AV, we are being conned again. Ukip proposed AVplus, where a certain amount of seats are given to the smaller parties e.g. we will have 600 seats, 150 would be divided between the smaller parties depending on their votes cast, the more votes more seats. The remaining seats would go to the main parties voted in. This would be much fairer to the electorate, but of course they won't adopt it because its fairer. They don't do fair politicans today. I object to Cameron and Clegg deciding what we sort of system we can have, why is not all systems on the table and we decide, lets face it they cannot be trusted they've proved that. Politics in this country is getting more into the mire and the electorate ignored more and more.

denis cooper

Barbara -

Personally I think that AV plus is a bad system, but if that's what UKIP wants do you think it'd be easier to get it -

a) In one step, straight from FPTP to AV plus; or

b) In two steps, from FPTP to AV, and then later from AV to AV plus?

It's true that you might get stuck for a time at the AV stage, but if that first step is rejected then that'll be treated as an endorsement of the status quo and you'll be stuck with FPTP for much longer.

And if UKIP wants AV plus, what about all the manufactured objections which UKIP supporters have been raising against the AV part?

So UKIP is offered a change in the system which would be a step in the direction it wants to go, albeit a small step; which would clearly ease the way for the next step which UKIP would want; which would in the meantime enable the many electors who sympathise with UKIP but don't want to "waste" their vote on UKIP under FPTP to show their support through their first preference votes under AV; which would enhance the standing of UKIP and sustain the morale of its members, rather than having them routinely plunged into post-election depression at its latest pathetic showing; which would open up better long term opportunities for UKIP candidates to work their way up and eventually start winning seats; which would straightaway save hundreds of UKIP candidates their £500 deposits; and which could in no way do UKIP any harm.

Yet, irrationally and inexplicably, UKIP members turn their noses up at it.

Ian Walker

@denis cooper et al: The Irish electoral system uses the far superior STV system; we should be so lucky.

So comparisons between this and our AV proposals are largely pointless, as the two systems are miles apart in practice.

For information on AV, I recommend the ERS page here: http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/article.php?id=55

Nick

And where do I get a say on a particular issue?

Not at all. It's still dictatorship by small numbers of people in political cabals in Downing street, not democracy

denis cooper

Ian Walker - AV is used for by-elections in both Northern Ireland and the Republic - both former for the Assembly, the latter for the Dail.